Through Russia. Максим Горький
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while in the town's lurid, four-square buildings I could trace a certain resemblance to the aces of clubs stamped upon convicts' backs, in the grey strips of the streets I could trace a certain resemblance to a number of rents in an old, ragged, faded, dusty coat. Indeed, that morning all comparisons seemed to take on a tinge of melancholy; the reason being that throughout the previous evening there had been moaning in my soul a mournful dirge on the future life.
With nothing, however, were the churches of the town of which I am speaking exactly comparable, for many of them had attained a degree of beauty the contemplation of which caused the town to assume throughout – a different, a more pleasing and seductive, aspect. Thought I to myself: "Would that men had fashioned all other buildings in the town as the churches have been fashioned!"
One of the latter, an old, squat edifice the blank windows of which were deeply sunken in the stuccoed walls, was known as the "Prince's Church," for the reason that it enshrined the remains of a local Prince and his wife, persons of whom it stood recorded that "they did pass all their lives in kindly, unchanging love."…
The following night Gubin and I chanced to see Peter Birkin's tall, pale, timid young wife traverse the garden on her way to a tryst in the washhouse with her lover, the precentor of the Prince's Church. And as clad in a simple gown, and barefooted, and having her ample shoulders swathed in an old, gold jacket or shawl of some sort, she crossed the orchard by a path running between two lines of apple trees; she walked with the unhasting gait of a cat which is crossing a yard after a shower of rain, and from time to time, whenever a puddle is encountered, lifts and shakes fastidiously one of its soft paws. Probably, in the woman's case, this came of the fact that things kept pricking and tickling her soles as she proceeded. Also, her knees, I could see, were trembling, and her step had in it a certain hesitancy, a certain lack of assurance.
Meanwhile, bending over the garden from the warm night sky, the moon's kindly visage, though on the wane, was shining brightly; and when the woman emerged from the shadow of the trees I could discern the dark patches of her eyes, her rounded, half-parted lips, and the thick plait of hair which lay across her bosom. Also, in the moonlight her bodice had assumed a bluish tinge, so that she looked almost phantasmal; and when soundlessly, moving as though on air, she stepped back into the shadow of the trees, that shadow seemed to lighten.
All this happened at midnight, or thereabouts, but neither of us was yet asleep, owing to the fact that Gubin had been telling me some interesting stories concerning the town and its families and inhabitants. However, as soon as he descried the woman looming like a ghost, he leapt to his feet in comical terror, then subsided on to the straw again, contracted his body as though he were in convulsions, and hurriedly made the sign of the cross.
"Oh Jesus our Lord!" he gasped. "Tell me what that is, tell me what that is!"
"Keep quiet, you," I urged.
Instead, lurching in my direction, he nudged me with his arm,
"Is it Nadezhda, think you?" he whispered.
"It is."
"Phew! The scene seems like a dream. Just in the same way, and in the very same place, did her mother-in-law, Petrushka's stepmother, use to come and walk. Yes, it was just like this."
Then, rolling over, face downwards, he broke into subdued, malicious chuckles; whereafter, seizing my hand and sawing it up and down, he whispered amid his exultant pants:
"I expect Petrushka is asleep, for probably he has taken too much liquor at the Bassanov's smotrini. [A festival at which a fiance pays his first visit to the house of the parents of his betrothed.] Aye, he will be asleep. And as for Jonah, HE will have gone to Vaska Klochi. So tonight, until morning, Nadezhda will be able to kick up her heels to her heart's content."
I too had begun to surmise that the woman was come thither for purposes of her own. Yet the scene was almost dreamlike in its beauty. It thrilled me to the soul to watch how the woman's blue eyes gazed about her – gazed as though she were ardently, caressingly whispering to all living creatures, asleep or awake:
"Oh my darlings! Oh my darlings!"
Beside me the uncouth, broken-down Gubin went on in hoarse accents:
"You must know that she is Petrushka's THIRD wife, a woman whom he took to himself from the family of a merchant of Murom. Yet the town has it that not only Petrushka, but also Jonah, makes use of her – that she acts as wife to both brothers, and therefore lacks children. Also has it been said of her that one Trinity Sunday she was seen by a party of women to misconduct herself in this garden with a police sergeant, and then to sit on his lap and weep. Yet this last I do not wholly believe, for the sergeant in question is a veteran scarcely able to put one foot before the other. Also, Jonah, though a brute, lives in abject fear of his stepmother."
Here a worm-eaten apple fell to the ground, and the woman paused; whereafter, with head a little raised, she resumed her way with greater speed.
As for Gubin, he continued, unchecked, though with a trifle less animosity, rather as though he were reading aloud a manuscript which he found wearisome:
"See how a man like Peter Birkin may pride himself upon his wealth, and receive honour during his lifetime, yet all the while have the devil grinning over his shoulder!"
Then he, Gubin, kept silent awhile, and merely breathed heavily, and twisted his body about. But suddenly, he resumed in a strange whisper:
"Fifteen years ago – no, surely it was longer ago than that? – Madame Nadkin, Nadezhda's mother-in-law, made it her practice to come to this spot to meet her lover. And a fine gallant HE was!"
Somehow, as I watched the woman creeping along, and looking as though she were intending to commit a theft, or as though she fancied that at any moment she might see the plump brothers Birkin issue from the courtyard into the garden and come shuffling ponderously over the darkened ground, with ropes and cudgels grasped in coarse, red hands which knew no pity; somehow, as I watched her, I felt saddened, and paid little heed to Gubin's whispered remarks, so intently were my eyes fixed upon the granary wall as, after gliding along it awhile, the woman bent her head and disappeared through the dark blue of the washhouse door. As for Gubin, he went to sleep with a last drowsy remark of:
"Life is all falsity. Husbands, wives, fathers, children – all of them practise deceit."
In the east, portions of the sky were turning to light purple, and other portions to a darker hue, while from time to time I could see, looming black against those portions, coils of smoke the density of which kept being stabbed with fiery spikes of flame, so that the vague, towering forest looked like a hill on the top of which a fiery dragon was crawling about, and writhing, and intermittently raising tremulous, scarlet wings, and as often relapsing into, becoming submerged in, the bank of vapour. And, in contemplating the spectacle, I seemed actually to be able to hear the cruel, hissing din of combat between red and black, and to see pale, frightened rabbits scudding from underneath the roots of trees amid showers of sparks, and panting, half-suffocated birds fluttering wildly amid the branches as further and further afield, and more and more triumphantly, the scarlet dragon unfurled its wings, and consumed the darkness, and devoured the rain-soaked timber.
Presently from the dark, blurred doorway in the wall of the washhouse there emerged a dark figure which went flitting away among the trees, while after it someone called in a sharp, incisive whisper:
"Do not forget. You MUST come."
"Oh, I shall be only too glad!"
"Very well. In the morning the lame woman shall call upon you. Do you hear?"
And as the woman disappeared from view the other person sauntered across the garden, and scaled the fence with a clatter.
That night I could not sleep, but, until dawn, lay watching the burning forest as gradually the weary moon declined, and the lamp of Venus, cold and green as an emerald, came into view over the crosses on the Prince's Church. Indeed was the latter a fitting place for Venus to illumine if really it had been the case that the Prince and Princess had "passed their lives in kindly, unchanging love"!
Gradually, the dew cleared the trees of the night darkness, and caused the damp, grey foliage to smile once more with aniseed